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The Secret (1e history)

The Secret (1e.. history) 101... (Note: this is the eighth installment which began with The Secret (prelude) 101. Its intent is to assist others in knowing what the true law is so to no longer be trapped by the allure of these so called internet 'gurus'.

Statute of Uses unveiled:

The church levied its position as supreme ruler of the lands, in England, before 1535 by initially offering mesne lords, and those holding a freehold in property, to place their [subinfeudated] interest into the church. The value for both parties was a 'quid pro quo' arrangement whereby the church offered salvation from the pressure of realizing the incidents owed to the tenants-in-chief/Lords of the Manor [and next paid to the king], and the benefit for the church was realized through the securing of titles to land which created more wealth & power for its deity based business.

The Roman Church needed property for their hospitals, rooms for the needy & the aged, for families of the church and to house those who wanted to become a member of their monasteries & churches. This faith based monolithic organization, needing property for its ends, is understood to have been the original creator of the idea of 'use'... 'not having the right/burden attached to the ownership of land - enjoyed under the current feudal land tenure system - but having the right of use, to the land, for its immediate needs'. These 'uses' are evidence of trusts.

In order to secure these 'uses', of property, the metes & bounds of the property conveyed were placed into municipal corporations so that their arrangements, agreements and structure would be forever secured in perpetuity. These agreements (titles), the laws that encased there rules of engagement, became the res of the trust. Since they (Roman church) were not given title by the king, through license, to the land itself, and the lords of the manor could not give away what they themselves did not originally control, it is through the concept of use that the lords were able to create new titles that were then annexed to the land. There were no laws to forbid the building of these trusts nor any laws to control the rights established under a use.After the Norman conquest (AD 1066) the Roman church started to amass land holdings, through newly created estates of title, to which the monarchy, as a consequence, suffered a loss in its ability to collect a fee and/or its potential to collect future incidents (taxes).

The first attempt by the monarchy to stop this transfer of estates, into the church, was a statute decreed in 1279 titled the Statute of Mortmain. This statute restricted the mesne lords or freeholds from attempting to circumvent their original [forced] agreements (that noticed payments of incidents owed upon their death), through the transfer of their held legal rights (trusteeship) into the Roman Church.

One has to take into account the burden of holding titles to land in the [feudal] common law system of that time. Common law only recognized two rights of land transfer: the right through the restrictive laws that regulated bloodline succession, and the other was in the event that if there was no one holding a present entail (lineage), then the title to the estate-in-land would automatically escheat to the lord-of-the-manor.

Another tragedy of the common law system saw that the wife was left out to dry, as it were, in both of these common law transfers, as she was construed to be one with the man and as such her rights died along with her husbands when he perished in battle, disease/wounds or natural death.

Uses 'revisited'

If a man has time in his day to contemplate possible loop holes, and those formally stymied through acts of law, he will soon come to discuss, with others, new schemes in order to replace a current legislated act.

To secure property for their wives, to insure their successors were not to be burdened with incidents, and to find ways in which to transfer their rights to property, beyond the rules offered under the common law, reality of uses became the new method in which to convey 'titles to property rights' (incorporeal hereditaments).

The church adapted the Justinian Code (creating perpetuity instruments we term today as corporations), so that these lords had a venue in which to place their legal titles in - first given to monks (monks were vowed to poverty so by placing land given to them, into a corporation, they could then enjoy the 'use' without the stigma of being a wealthy land owner) as one example, and/or these same lords, holding titles of subinfeudation (leased), were able to split legal title among up to 13 feoffees (trustees). This strategy created a 'use' for the owner (mesne lord), whereby the owner would just come back into possession of the land, as a tenant, under these chosen feoffees, so to enjoy the equitable rights without concern for the incidents or the abhorrent rules of succession mandated in the common law. If a feoffee died, a new one was replaced, so a lawful connection to death of the legal title holder of the land could never be witnessed that gave rise to the payment of incidents (as it was paid only upon the event of a legal-owners death), and if the new tenant died, if he did not have a successor, he could devise the property to his wife, as a tenant in fee simple, or could even transfer his equitable right, to the property, for another to enjoy.

As you could well image property titles of that time were split in so many various schemes that it became almost impossible to trace who was holding what right to any particular section of land, how many legal tiles were in use and how many estates were created - and for the lords of the manor, and the king, who were the 'decreed' legal title owner of the land, who had rights to the incidents and the rights of transfer to the subinfeudated property (upon a legal title-holders death) – so as a result people of interest of this time were governed by fear & fraud (fear was even more prevalent during the 15 century because of power struggles between monarchy and parliament).

This is the beginning of the melting pot that established the need to reform the concept of 'use'. Use is that which is held by a person or persons (trustee(s)) for the benefit of another whom we now term, in equity, as the beneficiary. The beneficiary was known through the French term the 'cestui que use', a term recognized by the conquering Normans.